


With You Til The End

by BardofHeartDive



Series: A Good Ride [5]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, F/M, Headcanon, Mass Effect 3 spoilers, Paragon Commander Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3763084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardofHeartDive/pseuds/BardofHeartDive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariella Shepard's experience firing the Crucible and ending the Reaper War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With You Til The End

**Author's Note:**

> This has been rolling around in my brain and I wanted to get it on paper (so to speak). It may become the prologue to a large ME3 fanfiction, depending on how ambitious I get. Questions, comments, and constructive criticism are always welcome. Thank you for reading and enjoy!

The only thing Commander Ariella Shepard could feel was pain. Her head throbbed, her chest burned, and her side and shoulder ached where she had been shot. She was pretty sure her knee wasn’t dislocated since she was still standing but it threatened to buckle every time she put her weight on it. She couldn’t move the last three fingers of her right hand and if it hadn’t been swollen into a fist she didn’t think she would have been able to even hold her gun.

How she would handle the kickback when she had to fire it was beyond her but she would figure something out. “Do what you must,” the Catalyst had said. She would.

She had surprised herself with her decision. After all, how many times had she argued for peace and allegiance? She had never accepted violence when there was another way. She had made other ways when she had to.

At first glance, synthesis seemed most in keeping with everything she believed. She had taken her first steps toward that beam, ready to fuse herself with the Crucible and create a future where there were no more organics or synthetics. There would just be life. It was that thought forced her to dig deeper into the solution.

They would lose everything that they were. They would not be human anymore. They would not be asari or turian or salarian. There would be no more geth, or quarians, or krogan, rachni, elcor, hanar, drell, or volus. They would all become something else entirely.

But she had not cured the genophage to turn the krogan into something else. She had cured the genophage so that the krogan could live as krogan. She had not created an alliance between the quarians and the geth so they could become one people but so they could live together as different people. She had not saved the last rachni queen to make their music the same as all the others but because she believed their voice could create new and beautiful harmonies.

She would rather die as herself than live as what someone else made her.

Like it or not, it had fallen to her to decide the fate of every member of every species in the galaxy, organic and synthetic alike. She could only do for them what she would do for herself.

Her feet turned to the right and she raised her pistol.

Doubt and indecision rattled in her mind like marbles in a can until she fired. Her finger squeezed the trigger and the tightness in her chest released. The gun recoiled into her injured hand and she recognized the pain but didn’t feel it. She took another shot. Strength from somewhere she never knew welled up inside of her and she fired again and again. With one last shot at point-blank range, the power conduit exploded.

The blast knocked her off her feet and she landed on her back in the softest, greenest grass she had ever imagined. She was surrounded by tiny white and gold flowers and the air was sweet with their smell. Though she couldn’t seem him, Kaidan was lying somewhere next to her. She couldn’t feel her own limbs but she could feel his presence.

“It’s over,” she said.

“It’s over,” he agreed.

Earth hung above them. It was no longer the pristine, green and blue planet she had observed so many times from space. The atmosphere was black and gray with smoke and there were glowing spots where fires were still burning. But there were no more Reapers in the space around the planet and that gave her a bone-deep sense of peace.

“Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” she asked.

“Just one.”

Her eyes drifted shut but after a few, slow breaths she opened them again.

“I’m going into shock, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

It didn’t upset her in the least. Some part of her mind knew she should be angry or afraid but she wasn’t. Lying in that grass with Kaidan all she felt was a calm, contented happiness.

“Kaidan?”

“Hmm?”

“Stay with me?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.”

She reached for his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Canon Notes:  
> Per her Effective Military Strength, Ariella does not ACTUALLY die. However, as the story's ending could easily be interpreted as death (and you may read it that way if you choose), I have used the Archive Warning.


End file.
